You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday November 13, 1903
Chicago, Illinois - City newspaper pleads for an end to the rioting.
As rioting continues, on this second day of the strike, the Chicago Daily Tribune pleads for calm:
STOP THE RIOTING.
A street car strike is dreaded by the peaceful, lawabiding element of the community not merely because of the inconvenience it causes but because of the rioting which is almost certain to ensue. The president of the National Association of Street Car Men says: "There will be no rioting if we can prevent it. The men will strive to make this a model strike, and hope that their efforts in this direction will receive their just reward by public commendation." The conduct of the strikers may be exemplary, but they have no control over the hoodlums who are not necessarily sympathizers with union labor but, who seize every opportunity which presents itself to show their hostility to peace and their contempt for law. There was an outbreak of ruffianism yesterday when the first cars left the barns. The men in charge of them-men who had been in the company's service and and chose to stay at work-were attacked and in some instances badly injured.
While we cannot condone violence against scabs, we would like to point out that "lawabiding" citizens are able to, quite legally, employ small children at hard labor for long hours, pay wages to grown men and women (street car workers included) that cannot decently support a family, work human beings under inhuman conditions which lead to their early deaths from injury and illness. Further, when a worker is killed or injured on the job, these same important "lawabiding" citizens share no responsibility whatsoever for the plight of the widow or children. Clearly, it is easier to be on the side of law and order when the laws are written by and for your own side.
SOURCE
Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-of Nov 13, 1903
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Thursday November 13, 1913
Segundo, Colorado - "Old" Segundo raided by militia, windows smashed, money stolen.
General John Chase
Militiamen came accompanied by company guards to the old section of Segundo, yesterday. They claimed to be looking for hidden arms. They ransacked the town, breaking windows and stealing money and jewelry.
That the militia and company guards would be working together to terrorize striking miners and their families no longer comes as a surprise. General Chase, himself, has been seen riding around the strike zone in an automobile belonging to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The General has issued an order that his men are no longer to associate with the miners. He has no such ban, however, on associating with the company gunthugs.
The General has also issued an order forbidding strikers and their supporters from going near railroad depots or congregating on public highways, effectively banning the peaceful picketing of the scabs being herded into the strike zone.
SOURCE
Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980
Photo: Colorado Bar Association
http://www.cobar.org/...
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Wednesday November 13, 2013
More on General John Chase and his fellow militiamen:
It was, says Barron Beshoar, son of the union doctor and historian of the strike, a comic book militia-397 officers to 695 men. They were commanded by a Denver ophthalmologist and occasional church organist named John Chase, who had earned his spurs in the Cripple Creek strike abusing union men and vying for honor with the posturing ex-Rough Rider Sherman Bell. At Chase's right hand was Major Edward Boughton, an attorney for the Cripple Creek mine owners' association and the militia's legal expert. There was fat, mustachioed Major Pat Hamrock, coach of the state rifle team and owner of a north Denver saloon, who had been part of the shameful campaign that had crushed Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dancers twenty-three years before and who would be a central figure in the massacre at Ludlow....
SOURCE
Buried Unsung
Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
-by Zeese Papanikolas
U of Utah Press, 1982
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Foggy River-Rose Maddox, Emmylou Harris, & Merle Haggard
Can't escape this broken heart of mine,
There's no freedom anymore.
Heaven help me on this foggy river,
Help me find the distant shore.
-Fred Rose